Integrated circuits are made possible by processes which produce intricately patterned material layers on substrate surfaces. Producing patterned material on a substrate requires controlled methods for removal of exposed material. Chemical etching is used for a variety of purposes including transferring a pattern in photoresist into underlying layers, thinning layers or thinning lateral dimensions of features already present on the surface. Often it is desirable to have an etch process which removes one material faster than another helping e.g. a pattern transfer process proceed. Such an etch process is said to be selective of the first material relative to the second material. As a result of the diversity of materials, circuits and processes, etch processes have been developed with a selectivity towards a variety of materials.
Dry etch processes are often desirable for selectively removing material from semiconductor substrates. The desirability stems from the ability to gently remove material from miniature structures with minimal physical disturbance. Dry etch processes also allow the etch rate to be more abruptly stopped by removing the gas phase reagents. Some dry-etch processes involve the exposure of a substrate to remote plasma by-products formed from one or more precursors. For example, remote plasma excitation of ammonia and nitrogen trifluoride enables silicon oxide to be selectively removed from a patterned substrate when the plasma effluents are flowed into the substrate processing region. Dry etch processes are needed to selectively remove carbon films such as carbon hardmasks from patterned substrates.